The National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) is a research center for ethnology and cultural anthropology.

Staff Members

CHE Sohee
CHE SoheeCHE Sohee
Center for Cultural Resource Studies・Assistant Professor
Research Specialization
  • Medical Anthropology, Korean Peninsula
Individual Research Projects
  • Social change and the transformation of postpartum folk illness
Personal website

Academic Qualifications

Seoul National University, 2001-2005, BA
Seoul National University, 2006-2011, MA
Nara Women’s University, 2016-2019, PhD

Research Interests

Gendered illness, Folk illness and the perception of body, Sociocultural construction of illness, Transforming of traditional medical knowledge and concepts under the hegemony of biomedicine, Birth culture and rituals in Asia

Current Research Topics

Social change and the transformation of postpartum folk illness

Research Keywords

South Korea, Birth, Folk illness, Idioms of distress, Traditional medicine and practices, Postpartum care and rituals

Publications

2018
(With E. Matsuoka, et al.) “New Trend in Asia, the movement for the natural birth in Indonesia, Korea and China” The Japanese journal for midwives, 72(10):790-795.
2018
“The Somatization of Social suffering in Korean women: through the illness narratives of Sanhupung,” Journal of gender studies Japan, 21:65-78.
2018
“Social Construction of Sanhupung, Postpartum illness, in Korea,” Mind-Body Science, 27(1):1-12.
2017
(With S. Kamiya) “A Study of Postpartum Care in Korea: with a focus on postpartum care centers in Korea” Sociological Studies of Nara Women’s University 24: 37-53.

Presentations

2019
“Changing concepts of illness: A comparative study of Hieshō (susceptibility to chills) in Japan with Sanhupung (symptoms of postpartum illness) in Korea”, Anthropology of Japan in Japan (AJJ), Meiji Gakuin University, Yokohama, Japan, November 30, 2019.
2019
“Idioms of Distress of Sanhupung, postpartum folk illness in Korea”, Workshop for Young Researchers in Japan and South Korea, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan, February 23, 2019.
2018
“Somatization of suffering in Korean women: focusing on the narratives of postpartum folk illness” the 20th Symposium of Nara Women's University Sociological Association, Nara Women’s University, Nara, Japan, June30, 2018.
2017
“Multilayered meanings of the postpartum folk illness: cases of the Sanhupung in Korean women”, East Asian Anthropological Association 2017 Meeting, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, November 15, 2017.
2016
“When folk belief meets biomedicine: changes in the postpartum care center industry in Korea”, East Asian Anthropological Association 2016 Meeting, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, November 16, 2016.